At the end of the 1940s and through the 50s, transsexuals began to become more visible as a result of the publicity surrounding the surgical transformation of George Jorgensen into Christine Jorgensen. In 1952, endocrinologist Christian Hamburger, with the assistance of doctors Georg Sturup and E. Dahl-Iversen, operated on Jorgensen, an ex-US Army GI hero turned photographer, in what was the world’s first sex-reassignment surgery. This case provided, on an international scale, new data on transsexuality and gender identity troubles, which, from that point on, were listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). Harry Benjamin, a German medical psychiatrist, advocated the use of the term “transsexual,” which for him designated individuals who believed they belonged to the opposite sex, rather than their biological sex. The Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association (now the World Professional Association for Transgender Health), devoted to the understanding and treatment of gender identity disorders, established a case management model that included a psychiatrist, a psychologist, an endocrinologist, and a surgeon.
However, when transsexuals enter the “official” network, it is without a doubt in their relations with experts—who are supposed to be the guarantors of their integration, and who hold the power to “reassign” their identity and gender—where transsexuals are confronted by the strongest expressions of transphobia: the comments of some doctors on the subject of transsexuals are not exempt from violence. For French psychiatrist Colette Chiland, for example, “the transsexual patient puts everything on the physical table, but places nothing on the psychological table.” Agnes Oppenheimer speaks of a “refusal of mentalization”; according to her:
Despite the differences (between transsexual individuals), certain common traits can be found, in particular the logic of their trite, preconceived and stereotypical discourses that is deprived of all metaphoric dimension. The narrative they propose is a negation of any history. The dialogue invokes the medical or social other, who he hopes to convince. Suffering, related to the unique discord between sex and gender, is emptied of all absolute belief, inseparable from the evolution of the syndrome to which the ‘progresses’ of science grant a status. The interlocutor is confronted by a logic that denies, affirms and demands.
The pressure takes on different forms during the journey that transsexuals must follow: constant criticism regarding their appearance (“Your hands aren’t very feminine!”), the obligation to accept long-term psychiatric follow-up, tersely inappropriate diagnoses (“You’re crazy”), and doctors who refuse to prescribe hormonal treatments for those who wish to avoid surgery. The list of potential harassments goes on.
Paradoxically, for many transsexuals, leading a “normal life” means having to live a double life in order to avoid rejection; having to “wear shirts and ties,” i.e. hiding one’s identity part of the time. Further, transsexuality’s visibility provokes exclusion from the working world: many are forced to quit their jobs, or find it impossible to gain employment because the name or photo on official identification does not correspond to his or her physical appearance. In this context, turning to prostitution remains a way out for a number of transsexuals who decide to live as a woman, which reinforces the widespread belief that transsexuality is synonymous with prostitution. It is easy to understand how a system of exclusion feeds on itself.
Thus, the vagueness of terminologies and what they correspond to—who are the transsexuals, the transgenders, the drag queens?—contributes both to the power and the weakness of the term transphobia. Transphobia refers to attacks against those who, beyond sexual practices, have crossed the boundary that exists between the genders. Its power is to shed light on the virulent and institutionalized reaction against what it perceives as a threat to the traditional concepts of sex and gender, or relations between the two. Its weakness is to delineate a discrimination against individuals whose specific characteristics are confused, and who are almost as invisible as the term is uncommon. In effect, if the term “homophobia” only appeared belatedly around 1971—nearly 100 years after the word “homosexual”—“transphobia” is so recent that it is rarely listed in any dictionary. This lapse in English-language references is symptomatic of society’s
heterosexist
denial of groups it finds disturbing. It testifies to a willingness to deny the existence of transsexuals, and consequently, their rights.
—Gaëlle Krikorian
Bourcier, Marie-Hélène.
Queer zones, politiques des identités sexuelles, des représentations et des savoirs
, Paris: Balland, 2001.
Bourdieu, Pierre.
La Domination masculine
. Paris: Le Seuil, 1998. [Published in the US as
Masculine Domination
. Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 2001.]
Cauldwell, David. “Psychopathia transexualis,”
Sexology
16 (1949).
Chiland, Colette. “Les Impasses du traitement du transsexualisme,”
Perspectives Psy
. 36, no. 4 (1997).
Czermak, Marcel, and Henry Frignet.
Sur l’identité sexuelle. A propos du transsexualisme
. Vol. 2. Paris: Ed. de l’Association freudienne internationale, 1996.
Dual, Sandra.
Rencontre du troisième sexe
. Toulon: Ed. Gérard Blanc, 1999.
Graille, Patrick.
Les Hermaphrodites aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles
. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2001.
Krafft-Ebing, Richard von.
Psychopathia sexualis
. Paris: G. Carré, 1895. [Published in English as
Psychopathia Sexualis
.]
Oppenheimer , Agnès. “La Psychanalyse à l’épreuve du transsexualisme,”
Perspectives Psy
36, no. 4 (1997).
Pirani, Denise. “Quand les lumières de ta ville s’éteignent: minorités et clandestinité à Paris.” Doctoral thesis. (n. p.) 1997.
Prochoix.
Transsexuel(les): le 3’ genre?
no. 23 (2002).
Steinberg, Sylvie.
La Confusion des sexes, le travestissement de la Renaissance à la Révolution
. Paris: Fayard, 2001.
Le Transsexualisme en Europe
. Strasbourg, France: Ed. du Conseil de l’Europe, 2000.
—Biphobia; Gayphobia; Heterosexism; Lesbophobia; Symbolic Order; Violence.
TREASON
The likening of homosexuals to traitors is a recurring theme in homophobic rhetoric. Since the end of the nineteenth century, this accusation, based on irrational arguments, has been the result of numerous political and military
scandals
implicating homosexuals.
In the collective imagination, the homosexual is often seen as “the other.” He is a stranger, and one who voluntarily places himself on the fringe of society, be it familial or national. His conduct, analyzed in terms of immediate pleasure, is considered egotistical and narcissistic: by privileging a form of non-reproductive sexuality, the homosexual represents a threat that places civilization itself in
peril
. As such, he represents a threat to the social order. In fact, detractors also believe that the homosexual does not hesitate to breach class and social barriers in order to find new partners, thus endangering society’s recognized hierarchies. Finally, seen as effeminate, the gay male is often accused of being ambivalent, weak, and gossipy, stereotypical traits of the female gender. Consequently, in times of crisis, homosexuals are, alongside other stigmatized minorities, the designated scapegoats for public condemnation.
The image of the homosexual as traitor also persists given that homosexuality is, in any given country or region, often considered a foreign import. In the eleventh century, it was considered an “Arab taste”; in the thirteenth century, it became a “French
vice
,” then the “Italian vice” from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century, and finally the “English vice” from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century. In the East, homosexuality was generally viewed as a “Western vice”; and in places such as Africa, it was known as the “White vice.” The controversial
Eulenburg affair
(1907–09), surrounding a series of court-martials and trials regarding accusations of homosexual conduct among prominent members of German Kaiser Wilhelm II’s cabinet, resulted in homosexuality being referred to as a “German vice” in England and France. During World War I, however, the accusation of homosexuality took on a particularly threatening aspect. In
Le Temps retrouvé
(the last volume of
Remembrance of Things Past,
also known as
In Search of Lost Time
), Marcel Proust underlines this change in perspective: “Since the war, the tone had changed. The
inversion
of the baron was not the only thing denounced, but also his alleged German citizenship: ‘Frau Bosch,’ ‘Frau van den Bosch,’ were the usual nicknames given to Mr. de Charlus.” In
England
, Member of Parliament Noel Pemberton Billing orchestrated a veritable witch-hunt against homosexuals; in 1918, he published an article in his journal
Imperialist
entitled “The First 47,000,” which claimed that 47,000 Britons were being blackmailed by the German Secret Service for being homosexual. For his part, the journalist Arnold White declared that German homosexuals were “systematically seducing” young British soldiers.
In the years between the wars, suspicions of treason were most often political in nature. The flourishing of a gay subculture in European capitals such as Berlin, London, and Paris was regarded with suspicion by a public haunted by fears of homosexual
contagion
; the development of militant gay groups further fed conspiracy rumors. During the same period, a group of British intellectuals, which included poets and writers such as W. H. Auden and Stephen Spender, was dubbed Homintern (short for “Homosexual Comintern”) as a means of publicly declaring their communist sympathies and their association to a homosexual network. In
France
, meanwhile, the menace of a possible allegiance between communists and homosexuals was taken seriously: in certain military ports such as Toulon and Brest, where prostitution of sailors was a common occurrence, surveillance files were established in order to draw up a list of “public establishments frequented by gay sailors,” so that “communist and gay propaganda” could be thoroughly recorded. After World War II, such homophobic
rhetoric
surfaced in the United States: Senator Joseph
McCarthy
’s witch-hunt against “the Reds” during the 1950s also included a campaign against homosexuals, orchestrated by Nebraska Senator Kenneth Wherry, who claimed notably that during the war, the State Department had been dominated by a homosexual elite that was prone to blackmail and that nearly “6,000 perverts” had infiltrated every level of government. Ironically, many of McCarthy’s close friends and associates, such as his advisor Roy M. Cohn and FBI chief J. Edgar
Hoover
, were themselves “shameful” homosexuals. This homophobic crusade, which resulted in the firing of thousands of civil servants, had repercussions elsewhere in the world, notably in Great Britain, where the “Spies of Cambridge,” Guy Burgess, Anthony Blunt, and Donald Maclean (who had defected to the East), represented the apogee of anti-gay paranoia in a context that once again connected homosexuality to
communism
and treason, portraying it as an offence against national security.
However, if during the 1920s, communist parties (especially the German KPD) had demonstrated a certain support for gay demands, their attitude toward homosexuals remained ambiguous. Starting in 1934, at a time when the USSR was establishing homophobic legislation, the Soviet party line thereafter likened homosexuality to a “fascist
perversion
.” As for the Nazis in
Germany
, if it is true that certain Nazi groups, such as the SA, played on a homoerotic esthetic and valued virile relations, homosexuals themselves were, however, quickly eliminated. The accusation of treason took on a new visage: Nazi ideology regarded the homosexual as a degenerate, a traitor to the race who endangered the expansion of the Germanic state and therefore must be eliminated. However, despite the persecutions inflicted upon gays and lesbians under the Third Reich, the link suggested between homosexuality and
fascism
did not disappear quickly.
At times, the accusation of treason, along with many other homophobic stereotypes, was internalized by homosexuals. In 1942, French writer Maurice Sachs, who was both Jewish and gay, immigrated to Germany, where he worked most notably (and seemingly inexplicably) for the Wehrmacht secret service; imprisoned a year later in 1943, one story of his death is that he was lynched by his cellmates. Others, after the fashion of Jean Genet, succeeded in transforming disloyalty into glory and a way of life. In a society that viewed the homosexual as a
criminal
, those homosexuals who approved of being linked to treason saw in it a confirmation of their existence on the fringe of society; in a way, a proclamation of support for the enemy. Genet himself, whether he was working alongside the Black Panthers or Palestinian fighters, or whether he supported groups like the Red Army Faction, was always on the side of the excluded. In this way, homophobic prejudice is replaced by a new definition of fidelity and loyalty which flouts traditional patriotism.
—Florence Tamagne
Bérubé, Allan.
Corning Out Under Fire: Lesbian and Gay Americans and the Military During World War II
. New York: The Free Press, 1989
———. “Marching to a Different Drummer: Lesbian and Gay GI’s in World War II.” In
Hidden from History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past
. Edited by George Chauncey, Martin Duberman, and Martha Vicinus. New York: New American Library, 1989.
Corber, Robert J.
Homosexuality in Cold War America: Resistance and the Crisis of Masculinity
. Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press, 1997.
Davenport-Hines, Richard.
Sex, Death and Punishment: Attitudes to Sex and Sexuality in Britain since the Renaissance
. London: Fontana Press, 1990.
Gury, Christian.
L’Honneur perdu d’un capitaine homosexuel en 1880
. Paris: Kimé, 1999.